WOMEN? IN RUGBY LEAGUE?
No Description
The Usefulness of YouTube
By Savannah Tafau-Levy
In an article written by The Walkley’s CEO, Jacqui Park, she states that journalism today has been “disagreggated” (separated) meaning each story stands and falls on its own. Continuing to explore the current and future ways of journalism amongst the role of social media, she says that journalists still retain power: “Power of telling a story, of investigation, context and the power of good writing”. Despite the commercial aspect of journalism such as the role of advertisements and social media platforms, we still hold a lot of power and integrity. But it is time for journalists to find different ways to keep up with the ongoing evolution of technology. YouTube became a useful tool in terms of creating a news story and through piecing mine together, I soon realised how important the platform really is.
Once again women are empowered, celebrated and rejoiced in sport. In Melbourne, Rugby League isn’t as dominant as AFL, however they do have one thing in common, women. It is great to witness the recognition of women in any sport which is why I chose this as my news story.
Personally, there were several issues when approaching the ‘create a news story’ part of the assignment. I wasn’t flattered with the idea our platform was YouTube and felt limited with my options on how to make it different from local news outlet stories. Investigating YouTube for the group presentation, I found that vlogs (a blog presented in video format) was being used most. In the Walkley’s article, Jacqui Park talks about how, “We’ve lost the luxury of not experimenting.” This statement pushed me out of conventional journalism and motivated me to try doing an “informative” news story through a vlog.
Keeping an audience engaged for the whole time was something I wanted to focus on. After producing my very first vlog, I shared it onto my personal Facebook to see if it would cause traction online and I found it was surprisingly a success. People were more engaged because they were informed in a different, easier and visually appearing way.
As web journalist, Robert Hernandez spoke about in the guest lecture, “A mobile phone is the first and last thing people look at every day”. I think journalism needs to pivot itself into exploring new depths while considering the consuming mobile phone culture, something we as journalists need to continuously keep in mind.
